Under
pressure from the international human rights community for the scale of gross
violations committed in the country, the Government began to respond in the
early 1990s with the establishment of new human rights mechanisms. First, in
late 1989 when the height of the JVP insurgency was over, it granted access to
Sri Lanka to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which started
to visit detainees held in police and military custody; it then invited the UN
Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the UN Special
Rapporteur on Summary or Arbitrary Executions to visit the country.[1]
Then, in 1991 it began to establish new institutions for human rights
protection. Some of the steps it took are briefly analysed below.

It should
be said at the outset, however, that none of the steps taken have been adequate
to end the practice of disappearance in Sri Lanka. Certainly the rate at which
disappearances are committed has reduced, but they still continue. For example,
at least 20 instances of disappearances in 2000 were reported to Amnesty
International.[2]

The US
State Department Report for 2000 states as follows regarding Sri Lanka:

Disappearances at the hands of the security forces continued
in the North and the East. During the year, there were no reports of
disappearances in Colombo, or Jaffna. The army, navy, police and paramilitary
groups caused as many as 11 disappearances in Vavuniya and Trincomalee through
September 29. In January, bodies of three Tamils allegedly taken by the Home
Guards near Trincomalee, were found; two of them had been decapitated. In
December, eight Tamil civilians were reported missing in Mirusuvil after being
arrested and tortured by the SLA. Two SLA soldiers were identified as
perpetrators and admitted to murdering seven of the civilians. The bodies were
exhumed. One SLA commissioned officer and and six additional SLA soldiers were
arrested later. At the year’s end the army commander had ordered an inquiry into
the incident. Human Rights nongovernmental organisations (NGO), including
Amnesty International (AI), reported an increase in disappearances in Vavuniya
during the second half of the year. As with extra judicial killings, the exact
number of disappearances was impossible to ascertain due to censorship of news
about security force operations and infrequent access to the North and the East.
However, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances lists
Sri Lanka as a country with an extremely large number of nonclarified
disappearances. Those who disappeared during the year and in previous years are
presumed dead.

The
World Report for 2001 of the Human Rights Watch speaks of the inability of the
Human Rights Commission to trace seventeen people detained by the security
forces in Vavuniya during the year 2000, confirming the rush of disappearances
in August at Vavuniya, referred to in the Report of Amnesty International.[3]